Israel Folau clearly loving his rugby after another outing resulted in two more tries

ISRAEL Folau’s smile remained as broad as ever against the Rebels on Friday night as his try-scoring became as common as a beard at Bondi.

Iain Payten

DailyTelegraphMarch 22, 201412:02am

Can Izzy’s grin get any wider?Source:Getty Images

THREE weeks ago Drew Mitchell put down his croissant to tweet a thought from southern France.

The topic was a grinning former teammate scoring yet another try.

“You gotta love how much @IzzyFolau enjoys scoring a TRY!! It’s like he surprises himself every time,” Mitchell observed.

The smile remained as broad as ever last night for Folau but surely - surely - the surprise is now wearing off. Folau scoring tries is now as common as a beard at Bondi.

When Mitchell tweeted Folau was scoring his fourth try but last night the brilliant NSW fullback took his season count to eight, and by season, read four games.

Folau leads the competition try scorers with 13 rounds left to go in the Super Rugby season, he is not only a certainty to break Peter Hewat’s club record (10), also on track to pass the all-time record of 15, set by Joe Roff (1997) and Rico Gear (2005).

He never wears one in public but if there was a broader smile in Sydney Friday night it must have been on the face of Wallabies coach Ewen McKenzie.News_Rich_Media: Melbourne Rebels coach Tony McGahan and Scott Higginbotham comprehend the big loss to the Waratahs on Friday night.

Folau is already a world-class talent but the areas in which he is improving are incredibly promising.

Where Folau was primarily a one-man freak of nature last season, this year his tries are mostly coming via support play. He is finishing, and finding ways to new ways score tries.

Michael Cheika says its “no coincidence” Folau is always looming up for the last pass, and that some of the best rugby players were the best support players; see Mark Ella and Christian Cullen.

Adding an extra stretch to McKenzie’s smile would be Folau’s fast-maturing partnership with Kurtley Beale. The pair worked beautifully together Friday night again to create - and finish - two tries in perfect harmony last night.

It’s no exaggeration to say if the talent of both wasn’t involved, the tries wouldn’t have come.

“He’s come a huge way hasn’t he?” said Rebels coach Tony McGahan, who coached Folau in the Lions series last year.

“On turnover he’s deadly and he is building a really good relationship with Kurtley. You can see him, as soon as Kurtley moves somewhere he’s not far behind. It’s lovely timing with his depth isn’t it? A lot of players will overrun those situations, or not work hard enough to get there.”

It would be easy to paint the Waratahs win as the product of yet another Folau-Beale magic act, but that would be a disservice to the NSW pack.News_Rich_Media: NSW Waratahs coach Michael Cheika praises his side following their hammering of the Melbourne Rebels on Friday.

The Waratahs appeared in trouble after a turgid first half that resembled the baseball next door - plenty of downtime, pockets of action and the referee piping up every 10 seconds.

The pedantry from Jaco Peyper - he of the Cheika glass-door fame from last week - was so aggravating a hat passed around Allianz Stadium would have paid for the glazier’s bill ten times over.

But even in the face of the niggly half and stern Rebels defence, led by the excellent Scott Higginbotham, the Waratahs remained confident.

Keep up the hard work in the middle and those blokes out wide would eventually get the half-sniff of space they needed.

“I honestly thought at half-time if we kept at it. Kept that physicality up we would open them up. There was a feeling out there that physicality was wearing them down a bit,” NSW captain Dave Dennis said.

“We have always known if we keep doing our job, we have the guys out wide to do some damage.”